It’s too hilly,
I’m doing always big shopping so I use car,
It’s raining,
It’s cold,
It’s too hot,
I’m sweating…
Wheel building time
This has been bugging me for a long time. Finally I splashed some money and dedicated some time to wheel building gear. Essentially I combined some DIY tools with more expensive bits. So far I managed to just try it, but looks like all will work great together.
At the moment I have a very basic truing stand from ParkTool (TS-8). Which does the job, but ultimately I want to make my own one (second covid lock down… stay tuned). The rest of the gear I’m pretty happy with and goes as follow:
The most expensive bit in my weaponry is from now on Hozan – spoke threading tool C-702-22 with heads for 13, 14 and 15 gauge spokes.
So far I can’t say anything about usage that much, as really I did some testing only, but quality looks second to none. I’m big fan of Japanese engineering, this is one of the finest example. I havd really a choice, between Weldtite (cyclo) threading tool, and Hozan, but after watching some photos and videos, I decided to splash some more money to have it from Hozan. Speaking of the purchase. I ordered it from a place called Plaza Japan and took 6 weeks to deliver it to UK. Not too bad as purchased during lockdown. The only annoying thing is the duty and other crap, like handling fee, etc I had to pay (fricking £69!). All in all the tool was 20 quid shy of £300. Bloody expensive, but I have what I wanted. As a bonus, the original box, came wrapped in Japanese newspapers, so we tested google lens. Amazing and exotic 😉
To that I finally added a DIY dishing tool. I was sick and tired of other methods (two beer cans and coins etc…). Really self explanatory how I made it, if you look at the photos. I had all the alloy pieces already (leftover from other projects). The job was really to cut with angle grinder slots for adjusting to different wheel sizes. I’m quite happy how it works.
Final bit, which makes the whole building procedure faster are nipple handling tools. After googling a bit I decided to go for IceToolz nipple pick. I bought two of them. One will be used as per original design – to pick up nipple and place it initially on the spoke. The second one I modified slightly to act as a nipple driver. Literally replaced the spring with a piece of wire (I had to drill slightly bigger hole). This way I can use it alone like that to turn a nipple (even without a handle) or put it on an electric screwdriver if I need to.
Future project (apart from truing stand) I’ll make a spoke tension calibration tool. I already have a digital scale up to 200kg. All I need to figure out is a frame and spoke/nipple clamping method. This way I can calibrate my cheap Chinese spoke tensiometer quite accurately without relying on the provided table, which (I got feeling) is not really precise 😉
Stay tuned, and keep’em rolling.
Microadventure
We set off with Marcel on dad-son microadventure to New Forest. The highlight of the trip was visit to National Motor Museum. I must admit we were nicely surprised with the quality, but disappointed with ticket prices for me+child £29, even with 20% off for using a bicycle to get there.
After visit we dived into New Forest and setup small camp.
This was Marceli’s first time sleeping in a hammock so he was a bit wiggly whole night, but I think he will eventually like it. Amazing night without even slightest wind, so that added to whole excitement. You can clearly hear forest life, we even heard being robbed from our cashew nuts at some point, but too lazy to get out and check ;-).
I wanted to test Blackburn cargo cages, as some time ago I swapped my fork with fancy steel one with all possible mounts and nuts (on each leg I got 7 attachment points for different setups).
The cages/bags worked like expected, and whole sleeping system (hammock, tarp, underquilt, sleeping bag) can be carried in these two bags. This way I’m really accessing these on camp, and I can use more accessible rear panniers for other gear.
All in all, 100km covered and I used trains and small ferry to make whole trip more interesting (and split into “chunks”). Quality time with kids, to prevent them becoming just customers in the future.
Winter grind…
Gorgeous weather whole week, so I tried last week put new chain (3rd) on my bike, and suprise suprise. I had to order new cog.
Old cog vs new after grinding English mud for three winters 😉
Anyway I did hub maintenance, as well. After almost 1 year not looking inside my gear hub (Alfine 8 sp) everything look nice. Castrol ATF oil looks still a bit pinkish, so that’s good sign. This is my third year after switching to Castrol ATF, strongly recommended as Shimano oil is very expensive. I’ll post whole procedure (as I’m doing it) soon but basically I’m using plastic pet bottle and hub on cordless drill to “stir” the oil. Afterwards, again using centrifugal force I’m removing oil excess from the hub (rather than dipping and than leaving for 30 minutes – stupid, my whole procedure takes maybe 20minutes).
The other thing I noticed (which is quite annoying), that cone on non drive side was loose. I don’t know what people are doing to prevent this, but is right pain in the arse. God knows how many times I tighten that…
Happy pedaling spring is just around the corner
diy camping air pump
It’s quite an old idea, not mine, you can google it or go here, here or here to see how other people doing it. Below my variation of same old trick. The biggest benefit IMHO is that the moisture is not building up inside air bed, and obviously is super quick. You can still splash £30 on Thermarest NeoAir Mini Pump if you like, but that’s couple bottles of wine or new Schwalbe Marathon (plus beer for fitting procedure), or 6 bags of coffee… all above better than another unnecessary gizmo.
Cheers!
3 pics, 30 pence, 5 minutes
100% accurate forecast
The forecast for bank holiday weekend was riding with a bit of drinking and was 100% accurate! C.a. 300km covered in France, sun, tailwind, cheap wine and beer. Back to reality.
DIY double battery pack
It was annoying for me to swap batteries in the dark on a ride back from work (original battery pack 4×18650 is slowly dying…), so I came up with idea of making double battery from storage container. Actually to be honest Steffano’s problem inspired me. I used 6 pin toggle switch grommet for 3mm cable, 2.1mm connectors (I wanted to be able to use battery pack same way as originally designed), pro 500ml container. Short story below in pictures. Thankfully my soldering isn’t visible ;-). Basically I’m able with one flip of a switch swap between second battery pack.
Keep’em rolling. (in the dark)
DIY mattress pump (plus hot porn video)
Probably the most useful piece of camping kit I’ve made (to date) plus as a bonus you can see pretty hot porn video with this piece of kit in action ;-).
Googling the other day I came across Exped Minipump. This is an awesome idea, but I’m not sure will fit other brands than Exped. They making quite ok camping gear, but unfortunately too dear for me. So I tried recreate more less same product.
I made valve connector with cable gland. Just cut inside to fit valve.
Cut ripstop in a shape of big lollipop as below. (already looking hot ;-))
As ripstop is quite thin I had to reinforce hole with a bit of stronger fabic. Tested and sewn to leg of one “lollipop”.
A “bun” been made with foam I found at office. The additional holes are to decrease slightly volume of the foam (will pack smaller).
In other lollipop piece i made air intake hole, and everything has been put together. Voilà, ready to test. Uhh! Ohh! look at that hot pictures below!
And now promised porn. Do not watch it if you’re under 18! Camera! action!
Final thoughts. Obviously that is prototype or MK1 if you like, just to prove the concept. The pump works ok, but I didn’t pay too much attention to details (as I wanted quickly test it), so I think the air leaks are the main problem. Other than that the test was promising enough to make another iteration in the nearest future.
Mistakes. “Foam bun” is too small, should fill completely wider part. I’m planning to add valve in “hose” part of the lollipop as I got feeling that air been sucked back a bit. The hose is not acting completely as expected, I thought negative pressure will squeeze walls and act as valve). I hoped that stitching need to be air tight so next time I’m going to glue pieces together and than sew it. Intake hole need to be a bit smaller.
Time for Mk2, stay tuned!
Holowtech 2 (again)
Below you can see my “high tech” tool for changing Shimano Hollowtech 2 bearings. This time I’ve upgraded to cheap and cheerful Chinese ceramic bearings (size: 37x25x6mm; bearing symbol: 6805N). Faster method comparing to old one.
Basically I found piece of alloy pipe (quite hard not sure about the alloy type). I made eight cuts about 20-25mm deep and bent the strips as you can see on the pictures (pic 1, 2, 3) (the hole on the inside of the cup is slightly smaller than inner dimension of the bearing). Couple of gentle taps with hammer to remove plastic dust caps (pic 4, 5), pry off the seal with thin screwdriver (pic 6, 7) and finally not so gently taps to remove bearings. I had two bottom brackets, one was smooth and easy and second required quite a hammering to remove bearings. I’ve cleaned all the parts, the cups with 800 sand paper (pic 8) and greased inside. Pic 9 showing my stack mounted in a vice to press new bearing into the cup. Can be anything just two thick washers and 8-10mm screw. I’m quite lucky to have piece of alloy matching bearing dimensions but outer race from old bearing might be used to press new one (pic 10, 11, 12) (bearing needs to be pressed by outer race).
